ET's Info-Stew

About a week ago we ran the dishwasher and noticed a puddle of water at the base. We didn't know for sure it was the dishwasher until this morning when Jenny ran a load through and the puddle started forming again. I was thinking "Great, now we're going to have to buy a new dishwasher."

I opened up the access panel and ran the dishwasher and saw that water was leaking out through the side. I went online to figure out what this meant, and didn't find anything. Apparently most leaks are the water inlet valve, or gaskets. This didn't seem to be coming from a location that indicated any of these problems. So I detached the dishwasher from the counter and pulled it out. When we ran it, we were able to easily see where it was leaking from. There is a black rubber hose that connects the water inlet valve to the main body of the dishwasher, where there is a hole to fill up the basin. That black rubber hose connects to a mysterious white box with what looks like a large air relief slot in it. Water was leaking out of this slot. This means it wasn't a simple hose problem or a valve.

So I called up the Whirlpool call center. After they collected a bunch of information from me she asked what the problem was. I told her and she asked me, "So do you want to schedule an appointment for a technician, or do you want to order parts." Uh, no. I wanted to talk to someone to tell me what that mysterious white box does and why water might be shooting out of the slot. I told her that and she said that Whirlpool does not have over-the-phone technicians. She looked up a nearby repair service and she told me it would be $75 for them to come out, not including parts, tax, and labor. I said no thank you and hung up on her. Like I'm going to spend $75 to schedule an inspection, probably $40 in parts, $45 in labor, plus tax, a total bill approaching $200 to fix this? That's a big chunk of the cost of a new dishwasher!

I went back up stairs and decided I would see if I could plug up the hole. So I took a ziplock baggy and folded it several times so that it could squeeze it into the open slot to act as a water barrier. I did a test, the leak was stopped, and water seemed to be flowing just fine into the basin. So I duct-taped it all up, put the dishwasher back in place and closed the access panel.

Only time will tell if this is an effective solution. I'm willing to have to patch this back up every couple of months if it means avoiding a $200 service charge or a brand-new dishwasher for a while. Hopefully the solution doesn't result in severe damage to the dishwasher, or worse. If it is an air relief slot, and that's the only one, that could be a problem if it is blocked. If only I could figure out what that little white box does, I might be able to really fix it for good.